salshred

This looks great! I have this kit sitting in my closet and haven't felt the urge to crack it open yet, but your work may have just inspired me! Great work!

Finally finished the Y-Wing. I tried to take a little more time with this one, as I wasn't happy with the X-Wing final finish. After much deliberation, I decided to paint this guy up like a member of Blue Squadron. I really like the blue markings over the original Red Squadron markings from the first film. Took it outside for some natural light. I didn't have any sort of plan as far as paint. I just started going. All the molded detail is just begging to be picked out in different grays and metallic. Took a side by side with the 1/72nd Ywing to show the scale difference. This little guy is tiny! Now that all the fighters are done, I have to decide how I'm going to base these guys! Do I build the 144th Falcon to go with these guys? Do I wait for the 144th Awing set due soon?? Do I separate them into multiple displays?? So many questions! I thinking a Death Star base dio for the Ties, One of the Xwings, and this Ywing. The other Xwing can go with the Falcon and the forthcoming Awing set. Maybe... Thanks for looking!

Thanks! I appreciate the kind words!

Thanks for the suggestion Ray I don't know if they'll be any good- I've found Eduard ship stuff to be quite 'heavy' for 1/700 scale.

Hello again! I got some more oil weathering on this awesome little walker, as well as a matte varnish. It came out a little darker than my original vision, but I like the used and dirty look. That's how I imagine all my Star Wars vehicles anyway. I took it outside to my patio for some natural lighting shots. The sunlight makes it look a little lighter, and closer to the movie stills. I think ill stop there with the weathering, however, I really feel the need to add some snow-like effects in small areas. I'm not quite sure how to go about it tho. I have white Tamiya Weathering Master powder that I thought about dabbing into some of the raised areas of the feet. I also thought about just some white paint sponged on in small areas. Any thoughts or techniques for snow are welcome! Thanks for looking! I'm still on the fence about the base. I have the 144th AT-ST and Snow speeder combo ready to paint, and id like to put them together with this guy. Might have to make my own snow covered base. Stay tuned!

This is great! I really love when people step outside the box for color schemes! Reminds me of the Clone Wars and all the cool specialized vehicles in that show. Awesome paint work!

Maybe they will release a second version without the light kit that will be more widely distributed. Didn't they do something similar with the 1/144th scale Falcon?

This is great! I love that you are doing your own color schemes!

Thanks!

Hello again. Taking a break from the tiny 144 star fighters to start on this AT-AT. Ive seen a few of these being built, and couldn't wait to start mine! Here is the base coat over the preshade. I used Tamiya NATO black as the preshade, and used Tamiya Light Grey as the base coat. Then I gave everything a gloss varnish, followed by an oil wash. Once the oil has completely dried, everything will get a second coat of gloss varnish, followed by some more oil streaks in different colors. I'm liking the way its coming together so far. Ill try to keep the weathering subtle so it matches the scale of this thing. Thanks for looking!

Wow I love the dark red and grey color scheme!

Yes, painting these little things is pretty fun. I like that they are forcing me to do more with brush work and less of masking and airbrushing. Its a good change of pace.

I cracked open the Y-Wing the other day. This thing is great! All the beautiful detail is there and its all nice and crisp. I built all the sub-assemblies to prep for paint. I really don't have a plan for the color scheme on this one yet. I think im going to go a different direction and do something not exactly canon. I was thinking maybe a fictional Red Squadron Y-Wing to go along with the two X-wings. Not sure yet... But the next step is to get some black primer on this thing. This thing is awesome! Anyway, thanks for looking. Hopefully I can get some paint on this thing over the weekend.

Thanks! These little guys are a great break from some of the bigger Star Wars kits I've been working on. The detail Bandai can get into these things still amazes me. I'm working on the Y-Wing now, and all the little pipe work on the main body is there. Still deciding how I am going to paint those...

Thank you! I have one more small X-Wing, and I'm not sure how to paint it. Thinking maybe just Red Leader. Also have the tiny Y-Wing to do.

This is so cool! I love seeing all your WIP stuff. Its always so well done! Very inspiring to watch and learn from!

Wow looking great! I cant wait to see those Shapeways figures all painted up!

I think I am going to call these first three fighters done! Here are the Ties The Ties were definitely easier to paint than the X-Wing. I gave them a black wash which really brought out all the detail in these awesome little things. gave the cockpit frames a drybrush of Tamiya German Grey, followed by some heavy black washing. I think the effect looks pretty cool. I let the wash pool in the recesses of the cockpit. Detailed the little cannon tips in Tamiya Cooper. Here is the X-Wing. Not as happy with this one. I got a little frustrated and rushed several things, the paint isn't very clean and the markings look very suspect up close. But with the washes and weathering, and viewing it from a distance, it works I have another one of these X-Wings to do next with the Y-Wing. Hopefully I can take my time with that one and get a slightly better final product. Next up I'm going to start on the second X-Wing and the Y-wing. Still thinking of color schemes for those two. I'm not to worried about 100% screen accuracy, as I'm more concerned with an interesting final product. I'm also not sure who I want to display all these guys, and if I want to include the 1/144 Falcon with them. Decisions, decisions...

More progress! The masking was actually fairly simple. I was dreading it, but the Tamiya masking tape I have was actually a pretty close match to the sizes I needed. I got the base coat down on the two Ties. I also painted some of the markings on the first X-Wing. I used a mix of airbrush and paint brush. Kinda rushed some of it, and I wasn't happy with some of the markings, but at this scale it was hard to mask some of the tiny panels and try to spray it. There is some clean up to do, and its a little rough, but I think I can pull it together with the weathering. Just don't look to close! I gave it a wash of Citadel's Nulin Oil black shade. I still have a few more colors to put on, like the dark red on two of the cannons. Also needs a matte coat to take off some of the shine and hopefully blend it all together better. Stay tuned!

Hello all! Thank you for the kind words and encouragement on the new thread! I spent the evening mixing up paint colors for the X-Wings base coat. I tried using several different ratio combinations of Tamiya's Deck Tan and White. I ended up with a decent warm whitish-grey color that I thought would look good over the black primer. Here is where I'm at so far. Look how adorable that little R2 unit is! I have no idea how I'm going to paint that little guy... As for the X-Wing, I almost made a colossal mistake by pushing the two S-foil pieces together. The paint has now made the fit extra tight, and I probably wouldn't have been able to pull it apart without some damage. Luckily I paused for a moment and realized I still had some painting left to do. As for the markings on this particular Starfighter, I'm thinking of going with the Porkins colors I have seen around the web. The one with the dark red canopy and the yellow and medium red markings. I have seen several outstanding 1/72 ships done up like this, and have always wanted to try. Funny thing is I cant remember seeing that ship in the original movie. I watch it around 3 times a week with my 2 year old son cause he insists. Really, its him insisting, not me! I think ill give it a go with this outstanding little X-Wing. Still blown away by how much detail they pack into the thing. Bandai is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition , in my honest opinion. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to masking all the mind-numbingly small canopy glass and Tie wings

Hello everyone! My first entry into the Sci Fi section of this amazing forum! I have built pretty much all of Bandai's 1/72 Star Wars vehicles, but these are my first in the smaller 1/144 scale. I am very impressed with the amount of detail in these little things! So far I have two X-Wings, one Y-wing, the Tie Fighter set, the Millennium Falcon, and the new AT-AT in 1/144. My plan is to put the Falcon and the Rebel Fighters together with the Ties. I have other plans for the AT-AT. Here are the three main ships I started on. The Y-wing has to wait, because I only have 20 alligator clips for painting I started by building most of the sub-assemblies and priming them. I tired using a new Vallejo black primer. In the past, I had tried using alcohol based thinners to thin Vallejo, such as Mr. Levelling Thinner and Tamiya X-20A. I was never able to get the Vallejo to airbrush well with this method. There was always clogging issues and splattering problems. So this time, I just used distilled water. It worked so much better! I had some issues to start with, but once I worked out the right water to paint ratio, it actually sprayed pretty smooth. Nice thin layers and it leveled itself out and looked nice! I had read that others on this forum and others across the net where seeing flaws in the 144th Tie solar panel wings. Unfortunately mine had the same flaw. I was hoping that the black primer would hide some of this, but it doesn't look like it. Next step is the dreaded masking of the Tie wings and all of the cockpit glass. As for the base coats, I'm thinking Tamiya Ocean Grey RAF for the Ties and somw Vallejo White Gray for the X-wing. Need to do some tests first to see how they look over the black primer. Thanks for looking! Hopefully get some more paint on these soon!

Thanks for the kind words! Face painting is definitely on my list of things to practice more with. I have several extra heads that I want to play around with. I'm also trying to get the hang of how to brush paint things without it looking like warm garbage haha. Most of my paints are Tamiya acrylics, as I mostly do airbrush work. Those thin down nicely with X-20A and Mr. Leveling Thinner. But I find the Tamiya paints hard to use for brush painting. I have a few Vallejo and Citadel paints that do not react well to the alcohol based thinners, but do thin well with just regular water. Are the water based paints better for this type of thing? So many questions! Could you also point me in the direction of your step by step? Much appreciated!

Hello everyone! This is my first WIP post on the site! I have been lurking around for a while, enjoying everyone's amazing work. I usually stick to Sci Fi stuff (mostly Bandai Star Wars stuff) but I really wanted to try and do a figure. I have several of these Game of Thrones figures that came out a few years ago. They all have amazing sculpts, but some have better paint applications than others. Jon Snow seemed to be the weakest of the bunch in terms of paint detail, so I decided to try my hand and re-do him. I hope this is the right place for Mr. Snow. Anyway, I purchased this figure a while back. He had a pretty bland paint job. Mostly black, with no contrast, and very unconvincing "snow" splattered all around his tunic. I wanted to try and spice up his all black look by working with different shades of really dark grey and black for shadows and such. I also wanted to re-do his face, as I felt there was a strong sculpt underneath the basic paint job. This is how the figure came. Here is his face, before I started. While the paint isn't awful, it doesn't do the actor much justice. (not that my face painting skills do either haha ) Here is the rest of his body, after I pulled him apart to prep for paint. (ignore the ugly Anakin Skywalker head ) I used my airbrush to give all of the tunic parts a few coats of Tamiya black. Once that had dried. I used Tamiya NATO black, which is really a super dark grey, and tried to paint in light coats from a top-down angle. This kept the natural black in some of the shadows (kind of haha) I then used Tamiya German grey as a highlight to some of the raised areas of the black tunic. Due to my sloppy brush hand, some of the highlight on the lower tunic are too wide. But the rest looked decent. I followed this up with some dark brown I made mixing in some random browns with the NATO black. I used this for his belt and his chest strap thingies (cloak straps?) Then I dry brushed the edges of the brown straps to try and get them looking more like worn leather. Finally, I picked out the edges of Mr. Snow's tunic with brown, and added some silver highlights to his belt and straps. Here is his upper torso, before any matte varnish. And here is the lower torso, with the not-so-subtle highlights And the overall look when I reassembled Mr. Snow His cloak got a similar treatment to his black tunic. The "fur" part of the shoulders of the tunic got some brown, then dry brushed with black. It all still needs a few more coats of matte varnish to dull down the plastic shine. This left me with the dreaded head re-paint... I didn't really know where to start, so being the impatient person I am, I just jumped right in! I started with a darker flesh base tone. My plan was to start dark, and then build up a lighter skin tone, leaving the dark tone in the recesses and shadow areas. I really had no idea how to go about this, so I just started slapping thin layers of paint on his face haha. Here he is after I built up a slightly lighter flesh tone, and filled in his eyes. And then I went and ruined it with some pupils!! Then finally with some facial hair. Fortunately, the head had some sculpted detail where the beard was supposed to be. This helped. I just kinda dabbed on paint. I put him all back together and gave him a coat of matte varnish. All and all, I think his skin tone is too dark, but I feel he looks more like the character than he did previously. So here is where I am with him now. This has been a great learning experience for me. While he didn't come out exactly how I envisioned, the end result was better than the worst case scenario I imagined when I first started haha. I'm not calling him completely done yet. Definitely needs a few more coats of matte varnish. Also wanted to use one of my left over Bandai 1/12 figure bases and make some kind of terrain base for him to stand on. Well, thank you for looking! Any comments and advise are greatly appreciated. I have learned so much already from watching some great WIP threads on here, so let me know what you think! Thanks!

Greetings everyone! My name is Sal. I found this site about a year ago while I was looking for Star Wars model photos. I've been hooked ever since! The amazing work you all post in the Sci-Fi section has been a huge inspiration and really helped me as I start up this awesome hobby. I was worried I wouldn't be able to join as a member because I live in the States, but I'm glad that I can! I am looking forward to sharing some of my Sci-Fi stuff and learning some new techniques from you guys. Also trying my hand at repainting a 1/12 action figure. The figure painting WIP section here is great! The body is done, but now I keep looking at the head and don't know where to start! Anyways, thanks for taking the time to read this!